Foreign buyers estimated at 29%

[McDuck]

Oh come come now Mr eri.
No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
As John law figured out, paper money ( electronic money) can work as long as it's realistically representitive.
Anyway, now that it's in the service of non western values, there are most likely bigger things to worry about.
And bringing it nicely back to the topic of this thread. Ha.

[eri]

certainly some bad banks around

the scale of the abuse, about 1 percent of Wells Fargo workers every year,

has stunned lawmakers and prompted calls for the company's top executives to either step down or forfeit some of the millions in bonuses they earn every year.

Stumpf, for example, made $19 million last year, including more than $10 million in performance pay.

Now, many are asking how could problems have persisted for so long without top executives and regulators taking quicker action.

"Where were the internal controls? This stuff was not sophisticated, why weren't there red flags, why weren't they catching this?"said Sheila Bair, former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., a banking regulator.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=11711934

[McDuck]

Thanks for the link.
Interesting article.

Bit off topic, but the problem here is basically the same as the one driving this thread.
The ability of Numbers to Misrepresent reality.

So since we have seen exactly this sort of behavior, with the misrepresentation of immigration and also it's effect on house affordability, it's worth looking at here.

I'm guessing the problem at FARGO was that the idea of "bank account" was misrepresented.
all of the usual functionality of a real bank account was misunderstood to mean " an account number on our system".

Similarly, there's a problem with the idea of paper (electronic) money, as it interacts with the banking system.
The paper says one dollar, but the very act of loaning out that dollar devalues it.
and since that dollar represents a relationship between the depositer and the financial system, it becomes a worng metric immediately.

This is the philosophers stone that the banks use to get rich.

[JBM]

i think you're equating property investment with playing lotto... Put a few bucks in.. Wait a bit... Collect a fortune... Now if you asked anyone if they were sure they could win lotto they'd struggle to convince you they had a sure fire way to win.

this post from you also explains to me why you remained in the same base employment for 20 yrs as you explained in earlier post even when income remained constant or even declined - you're looking for the easy path probably because you took a punt one day on property and got on the rising tide... No skill here... Just luck... This likely put you in a comfort zone and work income remaining unchanged didn't matter... This behaviour tells me if things went bad for you that you would be unlikely to recover/do it all again in this market.

Sorry if this assessment sounds harsh but we're try to asseess why some are super confident they could do it all again (some have proven it by recovering from going broke more than once others just confident in what they've learned) while others think we were all lucky and those starting today are less lucky as they didn't have the start we all did.

No ... not at all ... I've spend many many hours studying different investments ....one year I had control of near 2mill AUD at one point just in sharemarket investments (started off around 1.4mill) from a friend that was impressed with many of my investment returns ...i ended up with a nice classic car from helping the friend out ..

I've designed , project managed, landscaped many spec builds over the years since 03 ... hard work does certainly help your luck over the seventeen property transactions ..

Yes I have remained in the same base employment as it is a family business for one(over 35yrs) .... very good per hour pay work round 120 days work a year... and even with a drop in my income I'm still earning $50 per hour for my time and effort ...would certainly be good to get back to near double that...

Yes now with a young family I do like the comfort zone ...